As for Moonlight. Hmm. I can honestly say this show was a supreme disappointment. We’d DVR’d the first four episodes and I finally caught up with it this weekend.Word.
I watched the first episode. Meh. But there was promise. And I’ve always liked vampire shows.
The second. Still an awful lot of exposition. I’m willing to give it a third shot.
The third. Halfway through, I still didn’t care about a single character, deleted the recording. Erased the fourth episode without watching and stopped the automatic weekly recording of the show.
It basically felt like to me a poor shadow of the pretty darn decent Blood Ties, which aired on Lifetime last spring. Blood Ties is far superior, with better acting and much better writing.
Wanna see a show about a vampire and private detective? Check Blood Ties out instead.
If you're in the USA, you can check out Blood Ties on Lifetime, 11pmET Fridays. This week's episode, 5:55, was written by Travis McDonald, the story coordinator who put up with mondo-shit from the two Den(n)ises earlier this year. And he never once went postal.Because we failed. We simply didn't try...hard...enough. Jimmy the Bat could learn a thing or two from that Travis kid.
(picture from the Blood Ties wrap party. L to R: "Evil" Dennis Heaton, "Slightly Less Evil" Denis McGrath, Travis McDonald, and the great Kyle "Henry" Schmid.)
9 comments:
And when does it air in Canada?
DUDE! That's pretty much what I thought... I'm glad people agree!! "Better writing" word indeed!
I watched the second episode of Moonlight and decided it wasn't worth my time. It doesn't hold a candle to Blood Ties, which in my opinion, is better written and acted.
You forgot to mention one of the main things that differentiate "Blood Ties" from "Moonlight." The former is a vampire PI/Romance story. The latter is an attempt at film noir about a vampire who sleeps in his freezer. The former concept works in that one sentence. The latter not so much.
And the great writing, of course. Bearing in mind that I haven't seen any of your writing hit my tiny screen yet.
The verification letters below are spelling out foie. Is there a gras to go with that?
I slogged my way through the whole Moonlight pilot, in the end mostly for Sophia Myles. If not for that (and the fact that, to quote Cleolinda on LJ, "I'll watch pretty much anything with vampires or superheroes") they would have lost me in the first minute, by saddling the poor guy with a bullet-point exposition dump outlining his parameters before giving him so much as five seconds to introduce himself as a character.
In the same amount of time, Henry got to establish that "shag him senseless" and "drop-kick his entitled little royal ass into next Tuesday" would be equally appealing notions at any given time, and indeed they have continued to be.
Once again, "Trust your damn audience" and "Be fish or fowl and commit already" rear their well-worn heads...
My problem with Moonlight and a lot of other vampire shows (is it getting to be its own genre?) is there is nothing new on the table for the audience to feast on.
MOONLIGHT could have been great if they had played it for a HIS GIRL FRIDAY (MOONLIGHTING?) comedy tone and played against the stereotypes they had been given. Take the left turn when every other show has gone right:
What if Sophia Myles was the vampire instead of Mick?
What if they had to go up against a trio of vamps who were "Moe, Larry and Curly"? (or Charlie's Angels?)
And what if we were actually scared to laughter?
I did a vampire show for a season, it was sort of fun if only because no matter how terrible it was there was always going to be an audience for it. Even in the days when the internet was a less pervasive influence than it now is word got around that a vampire show was being shot so there was a bubbling of interest from the various sad and lonly's who glom onto this kind of stuff.
The trouble was (and actually the reason I quit) that no one on the networks or even in the story department gave a shit about "the rules" of being a vampire. Our dude seemed to be able to walk around in the sun as long as he was wearing some kinda SFP 9000 and he could also be photgraphed and could see his own reflection etc, etc... all of these things were allowed to happen so it was "easier" for production.
There was also the incredible stretch of making him a member of the police force. I understood the need for our dude to do good but why the fuck would he join the cops where he had to have a partner, be photographed, maybe have to work a day shift etc etc...
The answer -- 'cause that's the show we sold' seemed wanting (this was back when I still had some sense of "integrity') so excuse me for that.
In my naivity I figured this kind of disrespect for the rules of the genre would allienate the core fan base. I was, of course, wrong.
It seems that people will watch anything where someone jams a set of bad contact lens and fake teeth into their eyes and mouth as long as the mastabatory fantasy (take me you sexy undead thing) can be fueled.
It looks like there's several of us who think Moonlight is a very watered-down version of Blood Ties. I thought so from the frist episode and said so on my LJ. The show just keeps going downhill, IMO, from the other two epis I've seen.
Again, I say, can Lifetime get a clue?!!
Omigod. So true, Denis. I watched two episodes of Moonlight and gave up. You're right about the writing. It's all "tell" instead of "show". In contrast Blood Ties is just wonderful.
Geez - you'd think a major tv network would get a clue ...
Prey Momma
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